Apple #741: This Is Not News

Last night was DT's first address to Congress.  I didn't watch. I had to take a nap.  I had bills to pay.

After I woke up and paid my bills, I got on facebook.  I came across this interview -- I shouldn't even call it that. Verbal mangling -- between Tucker Carlson and Bill Nye.



If you want a left-wing spin on this interview, here's Raw Story's presentation of it. If you prefer a right-wing spin, here's the National Review's presentation. Whichever one tickles your fancy. 

I have seen "interviews" like this for years, decades. We all have.  Every commentator on Fox has a show like this in which they "interview" people in just this way.  This doesn't deviate from any norm that Fox established long ago.  The difference is, I watched this with that brain-freshness you have when you just wake up.  I took every bit of it in like every moment was essential to my survival.  And what did I see?

Nothing we don't already know, nothing we haven't already learned.  I saw that Carlson is not really interested in anything Nye has to say.  He pretends to; that is the pretense of his show and having the interview in the first place. But his pretense isn't even very well held.  His only purpose is to have Nye on his show and somehow discredit him, humiliate him, show him up so Carlson's listeners can get past whatever Nye has to say and go back to thinking exactly what they were thinking before Nye began to speak.

A true interview should engage, listen, learn from what people have to say.  Then build on that person's expertise to help us advance, however slightly, in our knowledge of the world around us.  Carlson's tactics are to interrupt, obfuscate, poke fun of, ignore, shut down.  When Nye's statements threaten to break through Carlson's veneer, instead of responding, he returns to his initial question as if Nye has not answered it.

This interview asks nothing of its viewers except to put up with the near-constant interruption (which is so rude and awful, a lot of people in fact can't put up with that and do not watch these shows). The pay-off is, you don't have to change anything about what you thought before. You can relax back into your comfortable wish that what Nye has to say, that human beings have accelerated climate change to catastrophic levels and unless we change our course of action double-quick, thousands of people are going to suffer.  Nah, you don't have to hear that. All you have to pay attention to is how clever Carlson was to shut him down. Yeah, Nye can't answer a simple question.  He was asked a simple question and he couldn't answer it. Yeah. Carlson says it 15 times so it must be true. Nye has nothing to say. He's ridiculous.

Even when Nye does Carlson a favor and explains to him what is going on with the leaks in the White House and in the Republican party, Carlson is so baffled by this straight-up unfiltered information he dismisses it out of hand as ranting. He finishes with outright laughing at his guest.

The lesson of this "interview" is don't listen.  Don't engage.  Stick to what you thought before you asked the question and persist in your unbelief.

As I've said, this is nothing new. Fox News commentators have been doing this sort of thing since Rupert Murdoch started the network. And countless people have decried these tactics since they first appeared on the media scene. Rush Limbaugh has been doing this unimpeded for decades on the radio, and his imitators have been slavishly doing the same too. (By the way, Rush and his ilk could never have had a show had it not been for the removal of the "fairness doctrine" which required broadcasters to give equal time to differing opinions -- a doctrine removed during Ronald Reagan's push for deregulation. This article by former staffer Bruce Bartlett discusses this change in journalism and other developments in a pretty fascinating overview.)

But in spite of calls to boycott Rush, in spite of experts pointing out why Fox News' tactics are so egregious, no one has effectively challenged this approach.  If they had, these shows would not still be on the air.  They would not have the viewership that they do.  We would not have Donald Trump as our President.

Because this mindset, of holding fast to your mindset, is comfortable.  It allows us to be comfortable and to stay that way.  It is so enticing, it has permeated everything about our culture.  It's in our colleges.  College, a place you go to have your brain challenged more than it's ever been challenged before and maybe ever will be again.  A place where you are asked to do nothing but learn all day, every day.  A place where you are to be molded by knowledge into a new being: an adult, ready to engage with the world and advance us a little further as human beings.

Instead, students come to college not as students but as consumers. They sit in their chairs, and they expect to be entertained for six weeks and get an A at the end. They don't really want to learn. They've got their devices. They're plugged into their headphones. They're wearing their pajamas to class. They want to be comfortable. They're not doing anything our culture hasn't taught them all their lives.

It's in our movies. La La Land, a movie so beloved it was nominated for I don't know how many Oscars (14) and came within a hair's breadth of winning best picture, asks nothing of its viewers. It presents one cliche after another, it presents only one relationship (what friends? they were only different-colored women in different-colored dresses. Ooh, diversity!), and a white man explains jazz. Jazz, a medium that requires and thrives on listening, is based on the very act of listening to what someone else has to say (musically), to take it in and respond, build on what you've heard, and create something new. I don't think the movie ever even plays actual jazz. Instead, it returns to a theme we heard at the beginning and replays it. The guy who's supposed to be a musician is played by a guy who can't sing very well, nor is he a very good dancer. Doesn't matter. We're not listening that closely anyway.



There are so many things wrong with this promo image, I don't even know where to begin. Obviously superimposed on a fake background, with a fake enormously outsized streetlight, and what are those wooden pier things doing there? There are so many versions of this image, some without a streetlight, some without their feet visible, some with the pair of them reversed, it's impossible to know which one is the "real" one. 
None of the images like this are even real, anyway. Below, is (I think) a screenshot from the actual movie. Messy hair and all.
(Daily Mail above, Independent below)




And when the movie is about to approach a sad ending -- which ISN'T EVEN VERY SAD. She marries a man whom she apparently loves and who apparently loves her, she has a daughter who is sweet, she is fabulously successful so she can go off and leave her child with someone else without fear or worry or any trouble about the expense or the social politics of it. The only thing that is sad is that she marries a different guy -- and just as it's about to face that slight bit of discomfort, it backs away, revisits the entire movie in faced-paced miniature, showing us exactly what we've just seen, and gives us the happy ending. So we get to escape from our escapism and have things just the way we want them. We get to have the happy ending, and we also get an easy-to-swallow dose of the bittersweet along with it. Nothing hard to accept or difficult or thought-provoking about any of it.

People loved it.

It's pap.

It's in our radio stations, our TV stations. Hear something you don't like? Change the station. You don't have to listen to any music that's not to your taste, don't have to watch any movies not to your liking (yes, La La Land turned out not to be my taste, but I sure did learn a lot from watching it, if only how much our culture is drained of real engagement with any subject), don't have to watch any TV shows you don't like. You don't even have to scroll through channels. You can custom-stream whatever show you want direct to your tiny little device and watch that show over and over and over and over and over and over. Talk about tunnel vision.

Hear some bit of science you don't like? Shut it off.  Disable the organizations that put out the scientific data in the first place. We don't want to hear about climate change and the damage fracking is doing, so we'll shut it all off. People have no clue how much science went into that egg on their breakfast table, that steak on their dinner plate. But why should they care? That egg is going to show up whether they know how it was made or not. Someone else will put it there. Someone else will take care of it. Someone else will think about it. I'm just going to eat it.

And what about people you don't like? You can shut them off too. Don't like their religion? Don't let 'em in. Don't like the color of their skin? Kick 'em out. Put 'em in jail. Put them on the other side of the wall and us on this side. We want only people like us here. People who look like us, talk like us, refuse to think like us. Because that's what makes us comfortable.

Daily Show-lovers are just as guilty of this. When Jon Stewart shows up, don't you feel that undeniable sense of "Ahh," of sinking into that mental Naugahyde lounger while you wait to be told just how wrong they are and just how right we are?  Isn't it lovely?  Isn't it rich?

It's the height of privilege, this ability to choose what to hear.  We can afford to buy the devices that enable that choice. We can afford to move out of neighborhoods we don't like, to drive away from a situation that frightens us, to fly to a country where we can drink fruity drinks by the pool and eat spicy foods and fly away again.

No wonder our President is so privileged he has no idea how privileged he is. No wonder he rejects anything he disagrees with. No wonder he tells lies outrageous and small all the time, and gets away with it. The difference between truth and lies has not mattered for a very long time. No wonder he has kicked out news media he doesn't like; we do that all the time. No wonder he is kicking out ideas, people, religions, anything he doesn't like. We have done this for decades.

Take a good long look at the man we have spent decades building. In front of our noses, behind our backs, in spite of us, because of us. We all had a hand in this creation.



If we want to dismantle him, we need to rebuild ourselves.

We can't bring back the fairness doctrine and require media to give equal coverage to opposing viewpoints. Our media is too diffuse to enforce that regulation, if anybody would even support it. But we can do more to encourage critical thinking, demand critical thinking. Seek out opinions that differ from your own. Challenge yourself and see what you discover. Ask questions. Write to your TV station, your newspaper. Subscribe to a newspaper. Subscribe two: a local paper and one that does in-depth investigative reporting. Tell people about what you've learned. Talk to people who have different opinions than you do, and don't just talk.  Ask why, and listen.

Don't disengage. Engage.

Apple #714: Quaaludes

So unless you've been keeping your TV and your internet turned off for a few weeks, you have by now heard that Bill Cosby got quaaludes in the 1970s for the purpose of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with.  He made this admission in a court case in 2005, but in the light of multiple accusations that have been made by multiple women that he drugged them to insensibility and raped them, this admission seems very damning.

Then last night I read a disturbing account in The Huffington Post of the rape and humiliation of Jackie Fuchs (a.k.a. Jackie Fox) by the band's creepazoid manager in front of a room full of people, when she was in the Runaways with Joan Jett in 1975.  She was given somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 quaaludes which made her immobile, but though she was drugged, she was aware of what was being done to her.  She was 16 years old at the time.



The Runaways, L to R: Lita Ford, Joan Jett, Jackie Fuchs, Sandy West, Cherie Currie.  They were all somewhere around 15 to 17 years old.
(Photo from Consequence of Sound)


So, what's the deal with quaaludes?



Prescription bottle for Quaaludes, manufactured by Rorer in the 1970s. Quaaludes are now illegal in this country because they are extremely addictive and dangerous.
(Image from The Paris Review)

• First, you can't get Quaaludes in the U.S. anymore.  They were banned in 1984 in the United States and in several other countries because they were too powerful, too addictive, and too many people were dying or going into comas from taking them, especially when taken with alcohol.  

• I tell you this first because I want you to keep the fact of their dangerousness in your mind as you read the other stuff about them.

• Quaalude is the trade name for methaqualone.  The drug was originally developed in 1951 (some say 1955) by a researcher in India who was trying to prevent and/or treat malaria.  It turned out it didn't do that, but they discovered it was a powerful sedative.  They ran it through some tests and it seemed like it was non-habit-forming, so bingo, they've got a magical drug that can treat insomnia and help those pesky nervous housewives relax, and no worries!

• So doctors started prescribing it freely all over the place. It didn't take long for people to figure out if they kept themselves awake past that initial 15-minute window of intense sleepiness, they would enter the realm of the high.  They felt relaxed, calm, a sense of well-being, little or no pain, numbing or tingling in the limbs, increased self-confidence, euphoria, and a ramped-up sex drive.

• That's a nerdy way of saying that some people who took quaaludes (and did not pass out) felt fantastic.  People who took them back in the day say there's no high like a quaalude high, and they say this with a kind of dreamy sadness for something lost.

• The drug caught on first in Germany and Japan, and then it became popular in the UK where it was called Mandrax, before it caught on in the United States. 

• In 1965, a US drug company William H. Rorer started making & selling the drug in the US.  The needed a brand name for the methaqualone, but instead of calling it Qualone, they came up with something else.  They borrowed the double A idea from Maalox (Maalox was a flagship product of theirs, so named for the fact that it is either MAgnesium or ALuminum hydrOXide), and the rest of the name was supposed to remind you of quiet interlude, which was what this sedative would give you. Hence, Quaalude.

• The pills were stamped with the number 714, so some people refer to them as 714s.

• Photos of Jimmy Page and Tommy Chong show them wearing shirts with a giant pill that says RORER 714.  

• Keith Richards named a speedboat that he bought in 1971 Mandrax

• By the mid- to late-1970s, "Doctors were essentially giving them out like candy," and they were a huge hit, especially among musicians, artists, and club-goers.

• People were "luding out"--taking enough of the quaaludes until they passed out, like a dunk black-out.  Because it was a sedative, this was pretty easy to do, especially if you mixed them with liquor.

• Some people took quaaludes to help them come down from a coke high.  Frank Zappa's "Pygmy Twylyght," talks about a guy who's "crankin' an' coke'n'," and "hurtin' for sleep in the quaalude moonlight."  

• Other people took it, or gave it to others, because of the way it made them want to have a lot of sex.  The Tubes' lead singers' onstage persona -- their version of Ziggy Stardust -- was called Quay Lewd.  Band members from the 70s said if you gave a girl ludes, "she'd be all over you" within minutes.  Hugh Hefner used to give quaaludes to his live-in girlfriends or to women who visited his mansion--every night.  

Billboard in Venice, CA, 1976. I think maybe that was originally an ad for Bacardi and Coke, but somebody changed it.
(Photograph by Anthony Friedkin) 

• Shel Silverstein, in addition to writing songs and poems for children, wrote some other songs that were for adults only.  In 1980, he wrote this little ditty:

Quaaludes Again

She's doin' quaaludes again.

She fumbles and stumbles
And falls down the stairs,
Makes love to the leg of the dining room chair.
She's ready for animals, women, or men.

She's doin' quaaludes again.

A band called Naked Grape also has a Quaalude song. Theirs is called Rorer, Or Rorer

Rorer, oh Rorer, where did you go?
You left without warning, how could I know
That many years later, I'd sit back and dream,
of doing the nasty, on seven fourteens

Rorer, oh Rorer, you were Rock 'n' Roll,
I woke up with strangers I did not know
Had you stayed longer, my death I would see,
but you went first Rorer, so for now, R.I.P.

• The thing was, a whole lot of abuse went along with the quaaludes.  The lead singer of the Bay City Rollers, Les McKeown, says a man gave him quaaludes and raped him when he was 19. Perhaps most famously, Roman Polanski is accused of giving champagne and quaaludes to a 13 year-old girl before raping and sodomizing her.  

• Then of course there is Jackie Fuchs' story.  One night in 1975, after she was given several quaaludes until she had to lie down on a bed because she couldn't stand up, her manager, Kim Fowley (male), asked a roadie if he wanted to have sex with her, and when that guy said no, Fowley undressed her in front of a room full of people and ultimately raped her.  

Jackie tried to protest, but she was frozen. “You don’t know what terror is until you realize something bad is about to happen to you and you can’t move a muscle,” she says. “I can’t move. I can’t speak. All I can do is look him [the roadie] in the eye and do the best I can do to communicate: Please say no. ... I don’t know what it looked like from the outside. But I know what was going on inside and it was horror.” [Jason Cherkis, The Lost Girls, The Huffington Post]

Jackie Fuchs (or Jackie Fox as she was called then), 1976 

(Photo by Neal Preston, sourced from Rock n Roll Icons)

• There is actually no evidence that quaaludes have aphrodisiac properties.  The drug may have earned the nickname "the love drug" because of the way it reduces inhibitions.  Or maybe it's only that it was used to knock people out prior to raping them.

• It was the Rohypnol of its day, except it was worse, if that's possible.  Because the drug was also enormously addictive. It took effect extremely quickly for something you swallow--within about 20 minutes--and the body absorbs nearly all of it.  Doctors and researchers were reporting that people were showing signs of addiction after taking the drug for only two weeks.  Two weeks!

• Here's one little tale of ludes and addiction, though it's about Iggy Pop, and he's been addicted to all sorts of stuff.  A member of a band the Dead Boys tells a story about a band-mate who was going to meet Iggy Pop for the first time and took a couple of quaaludes to calm himself down. But the quaaludes were too strong and the guy passed out in his soup.  Literally.  His face went splat in his bowl of soup while they were at dinner.  But Iggy, who'd been a long-time addict himself -- this was after Lust for Life -- was only interested in was getting his hands on some of this guy's quaaludes. He went through the guy's suitcases while he was passed out, looking for some he could take.

• Someone who remembers taking them in the late 70s said, "I knew a guy who used to steal them from his mom, who was dying of cancer." [Angela Serratore, Free of One's Melancholy Self, The Paris Review]

• The other problem was that the drug was downright dangerous, especially when mixed with alcohol.  One of the drug's effects was to make your limbs tingle or go numb.  People who took it a lot would discover that the tingling or numbness did not stop when the drug wore off.  They vomited, stopped eating, they fell into depression or anxiety or paranoia, and taking more quaaludes only made it worse.  People were getting seizures and convulsions and cardiac arrest.  People who drank and took quaaludes fell into a coma and died.

• David Bowie's song "Time" mentions quaaludes and red wine -- the fatal combination that claimed the life of "Billy Dolls," or Billy Murcia of the New York Dolls.

Billy Murcia, drummer for the glam band New York Dolls, died of an accidental Quaalude overdose in 1972, at age 21, after only a year of being in the band.
(Photo from The Shit)

• In 1978, Rorer sold the drug to a different company, Lemmon, and they kept making them and stamping them 714.  This is why some people call quaaludes Lemmons or Lemmon 714s.  

• The name "Quaalude" was actually trademarked, but it had become a word like Kleenex or Coke, where people use the brand name to mean the whole category.  Lemmon did not like it that other companies were calling their methaqualone quaaludes.  That was one of their biggest headaches at the time, mis-use of the brand name.  Priorities, right?

• Doctors and researchers were reporting a sharp increase in the number of people dying from taking quaaludes. This was a prescribed drug at the time, remember.  Just like you can still get oxycontin today by prescription, even though we know damn good and well by now how enormously dangerous and destructive it is.  

• In the 10 years from 1971 to 1981, 246 people died due to having taken quaaludes. One-third of those deaths were car crashes.  The majority of those 246 deaths involved some kind of fatal trauma, including suicide or homicide.  Doctors were basically begging the powers that be to tell people to stop prescribing it.

• In 1984, President Ronald Regan signed legislation making methaqualone a Schedule I drug, which means it is illegal to manufacture or sell it in the United States.

• After that, it mostly disappeared from this country.  

• It is still made and sold illegally in some countries, including Colombia, India, Pakistan, and South Africa, where it is called the British trade name Mandrax--and where it wreaks a whole lot of havoc.  In most cases, things made today that are called quaaludes or Mandrax are some combination of barbiturates (Valium is one kind of barbiturate) or barbiturates plus some small amount of illegal quaalude.  Quaaldues are not technically a barbiturate, so this is why people say that the stuff you get today that's called quaalude isn't the same thing.  But it is still addictive and very dangerous.

One of the incarnations of Mandrax sold in South Africa today. It is usually crushed, mixed with dagga (marijuana) and then smoked in a broken neck of a bottle.  It's extremely addictive, and people who are hooked on it often steal to support the habit.
(Photo from Drug Aware South Africa)

• Some black market quaaludes that are smuggled into this country from Colombia through Florida are being sold in the US today, though it is rare compared to something like heroin (illegal and enormously destructive) or oxycontin (legal and just as destructive).

• So the quaaludes that Cosby gave the women he raped?--er, allegedly raped.  In the cases of those who say he drugged and raped them in the 70s, most likely he bought the quaaludes legally, by prescription.  Judging from the number of women who've come forward, some doctor was giving Cosby a lot of ludes.  

(Composite image from WKYT)

• Maybe at first, Cosby didn't think there was anything wrong with it.  Back then, lots of celebrities were taking quaaludes to loosen up, have sex.  Maybe at first, he fooled himself into thinking the women wanted to take the drug, wanted to have sex with him.  Maybe the same way people have a drink to get past their nervousness, the women took a lude, or he offered it to them.  Maybe him offering the quaaludes turned into him giving it to them without their knowledge.  Or maybe he straight-up drugged them all without their knowledge from the start.  Hard to say what was in his mind.  

• But my point is, given the stories that have emerged about quaaludes, it seems like giving people that drug without their knowledge in order to rape them was something that was not all that uncommon in the 1970s when quaaludes legal and popular. That doesn't mean it wasn't wrong, of course.

• As for the other cases that happened more recently--Andrea Constand, for example, said she was drugged and raped in 2004--either Cosby hung onto some of his ludes, or he bought today's version of quaaludes illegally, or he used something else like a high dose of Valium.  Regardless, I don't think the "everybody's doing it" situation applies for the more recent violations.

• One last thing.  I want to point out that the company that first started making this drug, a drug which causes addiction, depression, loss of feeling, seizures, comas, death, and which was used to facilitate the rape of an unknown number of people--that company named this drug so it would sell like Maalox--a medication that treats heartburn.

Sources
Angela Serratore, Free of One's Melancholy Self, The Paris Review, January 28, 2014
The Vaults of Erowid, Methaqualone
PubChem Open Chemistry Database, Methaqualone
Jason Cherkis, The Lost Girls, The Huffington Post, undated
Eliza Gray, Why Bill Cosby Admitted Under Oath to Getting Drugs to Have Sex With Women, Time, July 9, 2015
Harry Low and Tom Heyden, The rise and fall of Quaaludes, BBC News Magazine, July 9, 2015
Larisa Epatko, What are Quaaludes, and how do they work? PBS NewsHour, July 7, 2015
wiseGEEK, What are Quaaludes?
Justin T. Gass, Ph.D., Quaaludes, New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008
Bay City Roller Les McKeown has been living a secret gay life, Daily Mirror, February 18, 2009

Apple #687: Bubble Wrap

After those intense posts about 9/11, I thought it would be good to talk about something that is especially soothing: bubble wrap.

It turns out, the company that makes a ton of bubble wrap (Sealed Air) recently posted a video showing how bubble wrap is made.  It got a ton of hits and was picked up by all sorts of websites.  But already the company has taken down the video.  Maybe they revealed too many production secrets.

But the good news is, your Apple Lady is here.  I've got other videos about how bubble wrap is made, and some handy facts as well.



Just looking at this photo makes you want to get your hands on some, doesn't it?
(Photo from Techno-Geek Nerd Princess) 

How Bubble Wrap Came to Be

• Bubble wrap was one of those invention mistakes.  Meaning the person who invented it was trying to invent something else.  The thing he was trying to invent?   Textured wallpaper.

• Can you imagine, your walls covered in bubble wrap?  You wouldn't want to hang any pictures or put any furniture next to your walls, because they would only be obstructions getting in your way as you rolled yourself around your bubble wrap walls.

• It didn't become wallpaper because when Alfred W. Fielding and his inventing partner Marc Chavannes tested this material that they made by sealing two shower curtains together to trap air between them, it wasn't a hit as wallpaper.  It was 1957, and I guess people weren't into that much texture in their wallpapers.  So Fielding & Chavannes tried to think of something else they could use it for.

• Their next idea was to sell it as insulating material for greenhouses.  That didn't go over too well, either.
• By the way, you can insulate your windows with bubble wrap.  Cut wrap to fit the shape of the glass, wet the glass with a solution of water, some sort of liquid soap -- dish soap or shampoo will work fine -- and a touch of bleach. With the bubbles facing the glass, press the bubble wrap against the moistened glass, and it will stick there and keep some of the cold from getting in through the glass. 

• The sealed shower curtain material languished for three years, and then a guy named Frederick Bowers at another company got an idea.  The year was 1959, and the company he worked for sold packing material.  He heard that IBM had just announced the release of their brand-new variable word-length computer.  He thought this sealed-shower-curtain stuff would make good packing material for those new computers.  So he went to IBM, pitched the idea, and the rest, as they say, is how it all got to be the way it is now.

• The company Bowers worked for was called Sealed Air.  And today, Sealed Air is the primary manufacturer of bubble wrap -- though they do sell lots of other kinds of packing materials and related products.

The funny thing is, you can buy shower curtains made to look like bubble wrap, such as this Maytex Cubitz PEVA Shower Curtain, Clear, available on Amazon for about $15

or you can make your own shower curtains out of bubble wrap:
 
(Photo and instructions from Sparkle with everything you are)

Make Your Own Bubble Wrap

• Say you not only want to make stuff out of bubble wrap, you want to make the bubble wrap itself for your very own.  Well, Sealed Air, the company that makes bubble wrap, now also makes a machine that makes bubble wrap for you. 

• This machine is really intended for companies that don't have room to store rolls & rolls of bubble wrap.  So they can make the size & amount of wrap they want, as they need it.  But if you wanted to fork over the cash, you could buy one for yourself, too.

• This video is pretty cool to watch because it gives you a good idea of how bubble wrap is made, not just in this one-off way, but also on the large scale.

• The bad news is, this kind of bubble wrap isn't poppable.  The way this wrap is made, the bubbles are connected across the width of the plastic by an open channel so that when you apply pressure to the wrap, the bubbles won't pop, but rather the air will be pushed into nearby bubbles.  This makes the bubble wrap better at providing a cushion, but it does not give you the satisfaction of popping the bubbles.

 

If you were going to make a wedding dress out of bubble wrap, you might want the unpoppable kind.  Or, wait.  Maybe not.  Maybe you would totally want the poppable kind.
(Photo from Odd Loves Company)

Why Do We Like to Pop Bubble Wrap?

• This is one of those very important "why" questions that are central to our experience as human beings, but which science has not gotten around to answering yet.  

• But people do have their theories, including me, so I will share my theories with you.

• It's tactile in a playful way -- the little bubbles just beg you to push them and squeeze them and poke them

• You get a little surprise -- the first time you pop a bubble, there's a little surprise factor. But it's nothing loud or overwhelming, something small and contained within your hands.

• The sound is pleasant -- can you imagine, if the gentle "pop" were instead a harpy's shriek or nails on a chalkboard or a car alarm or a dentist's drill?  People would not pop those bubbles for very long.

• As soon as you've popped one bubble, the combination of all these elements, which are each pleasurable, makes you want to pop another one.  And then you discover yet another pleasure, which is the feeling that you are eradicating some problem -- little pockets of air that need to be popped -- so as you progress across a row or along an entire sheet, you feel you are accomplishing something, doing a favor for the world by cleaning up those little pockets of air.

• The only disappointing part is when you've popped all the bubbles on the sheet, and you want to pop more.

• Or, actually, there's another disappointing thing: when one of the bubbles has a leak, so instead of making the satisfying POP, it just goes Ffff.  Augh!  Then you really must pop another one. 

 

There is also this technique, which is the equivalent of slash-and-burn bubble wrap popping.  Satisfying on a larger scale, but also over much faster.
(Photo from liz lemon)

• These are my totally and completely unscientific theories.  I invite you to quote me liberally on these.

Bubble Wrap, How Do We Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

• But it does seem to be universally true that we love to pop bubble wrap.  

• People have stretched bubble wrap across a public walkway:

 

• A guy has equipped his bike so it will pop bubble wrap as he rides it:

 

• Naturally, many people have wrapped themselves in bubble wrap and rolled down a hill. In this attempt, you can hear the bubbles popping.

 

• 336 students at a school in New Jersey got together to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest group bubble-wrap-popping event.  They did this to raise money for Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children were killed in a mass shooting by another student.  But they also had a lot of fun doing it. (From The Telegraph)

 

• People have even held a soccer match where the players were encased in giant bubbles. (It isn't really bubble wrap, but it is really funny. The good stuff starts around 1 minute in.)

 

• We humans are not alone in our delight in popping the bubble wrap.

• Cats like to pop it:

 

• Dogs like to pop it:

 

(Photo from Scott Spinelli)

• Pet pigs go berserk when they pop it:

 

• Even Russian raccoons like to pop it.

 

• Maybe when people are having tense negotiations, they ought to give them sheets of bubble wrap.  Like, let's get some Palestinian leaders and some Israeli leaders to sit down, and they give everybody a whole lot of bubble wrap to play with.  Enough for, like, the whole day.  No talking allowed, only bubble wrap popping.  At the end of the day, they would say, "That was great.  What do we need to bomb each other for?  I don't know." And that would be the end of that.  There.  Middle East conflict resolved.

Faux Bubble Wrap?  Phooey

• If you don't have any bubble wrap on hand, you can always play one of those electronic pop-the-bubble-wrap games.  

• But because the tactile part of the experience is absent, in my opinion, it does not come close to the real thing.

• You could say that about a lot of things, I suppose.  Ahem.

Sources
Stevens Institute of Technology, Alfred W. Fielding '39 Co-Invented Bubble Wrap
Daven Hiskey, Bubble Wrap Was Originally Supposed to be Wallpaper, Mental Floss, November 16, 2012
Daven Hiskey, Today I Found Out, Bubble Wrap Was Originally Designed to be Used as Wallpaper, November 2011
Daily Mail, How was bubble wrap invented? November 9, 2011
NBCNews, Bubble Wrap celebrating its 50th birthday, January 24, 2010
The Telegraph, School children set bubble wrap popping record, January 29, 2013

Apple #666: The Mark of the Beast

I could not let Apple #666 go by without talking about the number itself: 666.



(Image from The Daily Cannibal)


I was going to change my template so it was all in red & black with fangs and snarling noises and the like.  But nothing was legible.  I mean, you couldn't read anything.  I had to squint to make out the words.  Very unpleasant.  So, since I was monkeying around with changing templates, I just, picked something I did like.  What do you think?  Keep it or go back to the outdoor picture thing?

Anyway, back to the mark of the beast.  (I'm not half so threatening now, am I?  Rar.)

• The whole mark of the beast/666 thing comes from the Bible.  Revelation, chapter 13.  (Hah, now there's another numerical coincidence.)

• John, who is narrating all the things he saw in his vision, says he saw an awful beast.  It's got 10 horns and 7 heads and each head is marked with blasphemous names. It's like a leopard, but it's got paws as big as a bear's and a mouth of fangs like a lion.  This beast is, according to most readings, Satan.

• The 7-headed beast is given charge of the world, and people are going around awestruck, doing whatever the beast says.  The beast does nothing but say blasphemous things against God, wage wars, conquer people, and generally cause all kinds of havoc and destruction.

• The beast does have a wound in one head, which the footnotes say means that each head represents a Roman emperor, and the wounded one represents Nero.  More on him in a bit.

One rendering of the 7-headed leopard beast, along with some explication.
(Image from 4thewordofgod.com)

• So then John says he saw a second beast emerge from the ground.  This one had only 2 horns like a ram's.  It was in league with the first, 7-headed beast, and it got all the people of the world to worship the first beast, whose wounded head had been healed.

• The second beast was given its power by the first beast, and it used all those powers to lead people astray, and forced people to worship 7-headed beast #1, and to kill anyone who wouldn't worship beast #1.

• Now, here we come to the part about the number:

 (16) [The 2nd beast] forced all men, small and great, rich and poor, slave and freee, to accept a stamped image on their right hand or their forehead. (17) Moreover, it did not allow a man to buy or sell anything unless he was first marked with the name of the beast or with the number that stood for its name. (18) A certain wisdom is needed here; with a little ingenuity anyone can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a certain man.  The man's number is six hundred sixty-six.

• So, 666 is the number of the beast who is going to force all people to worship his more evil and terrible master, Satan.

• In verse 18, John all but comes right out and says, "Come on, people, it's obvious who this is.  I'll tell you, but in code."  

• How to beak the code?  It was the custom of the day to assign numbers to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  If we were to do the same thing to our alphabet, it would go like this: A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on.  

• In the Hebrew alphabet, once they got to 10, they counted by tens, and once they got to 100, they counted by 100s.  So it goes like this:

alef = 1; bet = 2; gimel = 3; dalet = 4; hey = 5;
waw = 6; zayin = 7; chet = 8; tet = 9; yod = 10;
kaf = 20; lamed = 30; mem = 40; nun = 50;
samek = 60; ayin = 70; pey = 80; tsadeh = 90;
qof = 100; resh = 200; shin = 300; taw = 400

Pictorial form of the same thing.
(Image from Dial-the-Truth Ministries)

• How you go from letters to numbers seems pretty clear.  But how you go backwards, from numbers to letters is less clear.  So you get lots and lots of theories.

• Over the centuries, people have argued, depending on their religion or their politics, that the beast is the person who personifies some focus of their particular hatred.  Catholics have said the number works out to be Martin Luther.  Protestants have said it equates to the Pope, or the Pontiff.  Democrats have argued that it is George W. Bush.  Republicans have said it was John F. Kennedy, or Bill Clinton, or Hillary Clinton.  You see how it goes.

• But most Biblical scholars think that 666 is code for the Emperor Nero.  In Hebrew, those two words translate to Nun-resh-waw-nun Qof-samek-resh. In numbers that is 50+200+6+50 (306) and 100+60+200 (360).  Add the two together and you get 666.

Nero. The original 666 guy.
(Image from Biography)

• Revelations was written during the reign of Emperor Domitian.  So why would it be a big deal to say that Nero, who had been dead 13 years, was the handmaid of the devil?

• Because Domitian had revived various persecutions of Christians and Jews (the Romans regarded Christians and some wacko Jewish cult) which had not been in force in the days of Nero.  So it is possible that, in pointing the devil-finger at Nero, John was thereby also pointing the devil-finger at Domitian.  Naturally, he wouldn't want to come right out and say it so directly or he might get all sorts of people executed for his trouble.

• I really want to interject some little facts I learned about both those emperors.  They're just too good to let them lie quiet.

• OK, so Nero was actually kind of normal and helpful at first.  It was his mother who was whacked.  She married her uncle, the then-emperor Claudius.  She talked him into naming her son by a previous marriage as his successor.  This was Nero.  Then she poisoned Claudius and Nero became emperor.  He was 17.

• Nero fell in love with a slave, his mother didn't like her, they had a falling out, and he spurned his mother. She got pissed, then started telling everyone Claudius's son should have been emperor, not Nero.  Then, mysteriously, Claudius's son turns up dead. Hmm. Wonder how that happened.

• Nero's mom still went around saying that Nero shouldn't be emperor, so he kicked her out.  Then he decided he was sick of being with the slave whom he had married, he wanted to marry someone else instead, but Nero's mom went around saying he couldn't do that because divorce was bad, so Nero had her killed.

• That's right, Nero had his mother murdered.

• After that, he went right off the wagon.  He got drunk all the time, went around performing his own poetry and music, he had wives he was sick of executed and married new ones, he turned tyrannical against all sorts of people, etc etc.

Nero. With the thumbs down, saying someone ought to be killed for sport.
(Image from Listverse)

• Then came that business of Rome burning that you've heard so much about.  Nero did not stand around fiddling, but the fire did go on for 10 days.  75 percent of the city burned down.

• Rumor had it that Nero started the fire to make way for the new villa he planned to build.  He couldn't have people saying he burned down the city, so he needed a scapegoat.  Who started the fire?  The Christians, of course!  Those people in that weird new cult, they're the ones responsible for 3/4 of Romans being burned out of their houses.  Thus began the emperor-sanctioned persecution of Christians.  He had them eaten by dogs, nailed to crosses, set on fire, or burned to serve as a light source after sunset.

• Nero did all sorts of other nefarious things, such as selling political offices to raise money for his new villa, etc., etc.  That's when the Senators began conspiring against him.  Nero found out they were planning on having him beaten to death.  Rather than face that, he decided to kill himself.  He tried to stab himself in the neck but he couldn't finish the job, so he told his secretary to do it, which he did.

• This is why people think the wounded head on the 7-headed monster is Nero. The wound was Nero's somewhat self-inflicted stab wound to his neck.

• Domitian, several years & emperors later, came to power, but he was young and inexperienced, and people weren't really accepting of him as emperor.  So he started invoking the whole I'm an emperor and therefore I'm a god thing.  He made people introduce him as the god Domitian, and they had to say certain things in a certain way to indicate that they thought he was a god, etc. etc.

• The Christians and the Jews, they didn't want to do that.  So Domitian saw them as undermining his efforts to establish his imperial authority.  So he ordered some of them to be put to death, and then after that, people started persecuting the Christians and the Jews in the way they had while Nero was running around getting drunk and shouting at people and setting them on fire and so on.  The John who wrote the book of Revelation lived during the time of Domitian.

Domitian. Later in his rule, "in fits of paranoia, instructed several murderous 'terrors'" which seem to have originated in a deep sense of personal inadequacy in the eyes of his brother & father. Aw, gee.
(Image from Roman Scotland)

• So, historically, that's what the mark of the beast is most likely about.  Indicating the emperors who were running around killing people left and right.

• But, since those verses don't come right out and say those emperors' names, and since there's that verse about people not being allowed to buy or sell anything without being marked with the name of the beast, people have read all kinds of things into the number 666.

• They have claimed that 666 stands for this person and that person, or such and such an economic thing, and so on.  Here is some of the 666-insanity:

• Barcodes are the mark of the beast

How exactly these lines represent 6s is not clearly explained, but swiping these barcodes means someone is taking money from your bank account, and soon there will be a single bank in control of everyone's money, and then the end days will be upon us.
(Image and extremely vague but exclamation-point-ridden theory from this site)

• The Beatles bear the mark of the beast

See how Paul is making the OK sign?  That doesn't mean OK.  That's the number 6 three times!  It's 666!  The Beatles are agents of the devil!
(Image and theory from this site)



See? This does not mean sex, but DEVIL!
(Image and theory from 666 hand sign)



From this moment, Michael Jackson's doom was sealed.
(Image and theory from 666 hand sign)

• The numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666.  Therefore roulette, or maybe it's casinos, or maybe it's gambling that is the mark of the beast. 

• The Hebrew letter Vav, or Waw, which might as well be W in English, correlates with the number 6.  So web precursor www = 666, so therefore the entire internet bears the mark of the beast.

• The Washington Monument measures 55.5 ft on each side.  If you convert that to inches, each side measures 666.  Therefore the Washington Monument is an occult symbol, and a mark of the beast. (In fact, the Monument measures 555 ft. 5-1/8 in. tall.  That is 6,665-1/8 inches.  The base is 55 ft. 1-1/2 in. wide. That is 661-1/2 inches.  Not 666.)

• The Louvre has 666 panes of glass, or if you converted the doors to glass, it would have 666 panes of glass, therefore it is a mark of the beast. (Actually, the Louvre has 673 panes of glass, excluding the doors.)

 
VISA's name is the mark of the beast.
(Image from DeusILUSÃO)



Walt Disney's signature bears the mark of the beast.
(Image and a whole other theory I could not even begin to describe from Tricked by the Light)

• It just goes on and on and on. . . .

• There are some rather interesting coincidences about the number 666, numerically.

• The first six Roman numerals add up to 666: I+V+X+L+C+D=666

• The smallest prime factor of 666 is 37. If you translate the letters IVXLCD in the English alphabet to numbers (like what we did with the Hebrew alphabet) and add them, the largest prime factor of that total is also 37.

• Take the first 7 prime numbers, square them, and add them up: 2² + 3² + 5² + 7² + 11² + 13² + 17² = 666

• And many more besides.  But, you know, look at any number long enough, and I'm sure you'll find all sorts of interesting coincidences about it.

• In response to such extensive 666-fixation, some people have come up with a joke list of 666s, which includes the following:

• 666 = number of the beast
• 668 = neighbor of the beast
• 660 = approximate number of the beast
• 665 = older brother of the beast
• 0.666 = number of the millibeast
• 1010011010 = binary number of the beast
• 00666 = zip code of the beast
• $665.95 = retail price of the beast
• $656.66 = Walmart price of the beast
• $646.66 = next week's Walmart price of the beast
• $333.00 = after-Christmas sale price of the beast
• Phillips 666 = gasoline of the beast
• Route 666 = way of the beast [actually there is a Highway 666. People keep stealing the road signs.]
• 666k = retirement plan of the beast
• 999 = Australian number of the beast
• Chanel No. 666 = perfume of the beast
• IAM 666 = license plate of the beast

• and so on. 

• Meanwhile, maybe the number of the beast isn't really 666.  Maybe it's actually 616.

• No, really.  Some people think that the text originally said 616, not 666.  A few translations even say six hundred sixteen, not six hundred sixty-six.

• In which case, all those people with their special, significant 666s need to do some quick recalculating.  And in which case, the area code for West Michigan is the area code of the beast. 

West Michigan. Den of the beast?
(Image from eachTown)

Sources

Catholic Resources, 666: The Number of the Beast

Biography, Nero synopsis 

About.com, Nero

Online Encyclopedia of Roman Rulers and their Families, Imperial Index

Donald McFayden, The Occasion of the Domitianic Persecution, American Journal of Theology, Jan 1920

Eyewitness to History, Nero Persecutes the Christians, 64 A.D.

I don't even want to give this site any credence, 666

Rapture Ready, The Number of the Beast

666truth

Enchanted Learning, Washington Monument

The Louvre, The Da Vinci Code: Between Fiction and Fact

Prime Curios, 666

Math World, Beast Number

Apple #659: Fear of Clowns

For Halloween this year, I dressed up as Raggedy Andy.



Raggedy Ann and Andy were dolls that came to life in books from the 1920s. They had nice little adventures like getting in pillow fights and roasting marshmallows and having the marshmallows get stuck to their soft cotton hands.
(Image from raggedyannandraggedyandy.com)



You could also get soft, stuffed dolls made to look like the drawings in the books. This is a Raggedy Andy doll. 
(Photo from I Found My Childhood on eBay)


My costume was one my mom had and gave to me several years ago. I had worn it once about 10 years ago, and I thought this year, why not break it out again. Nobody I know now has ever seen me wear it, so it will be new to them.

Admittedly, my costume is only an approximation of the original doll. Also, while I remembered there were triangles on the face, I remembered them wrong so when I painted my face, it didn't quite look like Raggedy Andy's. The result was, people assumed I was a regular old clown.

And several people said they were therefore afraid of me--or my costume.


Really? THIS is scary?


The number of people who said they were afraid of my costume was rather surprising. More people said they were afraid of me this year than when I wore the costume 10 or so years ago.

First of all, I personally don't get the whole fear of clowns thing. It's a person wearing make-up and baggy clothes. Wooo, scary. So I'm wondering, especially since more people seem to be afraid of clowns--or more people are saying they're afraid of clowns--is this like bacon? I mean, is fear of clowns increasing the same way love of bacon has become so widespread, if you say "bacon," 15 people will start drooling immediately? Is fear of clowns becoming that pervasive, so now if you were to say, "Hey, a clown," 15 people would duck under a table and another 5 would say, "Totally. Love the bacon. Hate the clowns."

• There is a name for a phobia of clowns. But first, let's get our levels of fear straight.

• There's "I don't think clowns are funny." This is me. Not afraid, but not entertained, either. Clown humor is slapstick. "Oh! Look at my enormous shoes! Oh, I fell down! Oh, I squirted water out of my stupid fake daisy!" To me, slapstick is more annoying than funny. Like America's Funniest Home Videos. Physical humor and nothign more. Boring after about 30 seconds, annoying after about a minute. 

• The next level is, "I don't like clowns." At this level, you just don't care for them. You wouldn't put a clown picture on your wall, you might even be tempted to punch such a picture, but you wouldn't run and hide from it either. 

• Next we have, "I'm afraid of clowns." You see a clown and you get a little heart-poundy, a little nervous. You're not really sure what that clown is going to do, and you don't really want to find out. If you saw a clown in a haunted house, you would get scared, solely by virtue of the fact that it is a clown. 

• Finally we have clown phobia. You see a clown and your heart races. You break out in a sweat, your hands shake, you feel nauseous, you have trouble breathing, you feel panicky. Full-blown, out of control fear. 

(Image posted by BlackTequilaKiss at horror-movies.ca)

• People say the phobia-word for this is coulrophobia. Literally, that means fear of stilt-walkers. Because apparently the Greeks, from whom we get most of our -phobia words, don't have a word for "clown." 

• It isn't a term accepted by any psychological association, nor is it in the DSM-5, nor is it in a lot of dictionaries. Apparently the word has only been around since the 1980s or so -- which suggests to me that this fear of clowns thing may be recent in origin. 

• But for some people, fear of clowns can be quite real. Like a fear of spiders, or a fear of snakes, or any other phobia, it can affect people's lives in very definite ways. Some people will even avoid eating at McDonald's because they don't want to see any images of Ronald McDonald. 

To me, if anything, this is only mildly annoying. But for some people, this instills fear.
(Photo from the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Four States)

• Very guessy estimates say clown phobia is much more prevalent in Western society, and that anywhere from 5% to 12% of adults have some fear of clowns. 

• People who have studied this say that what instills the fear is the fact that the faces are painted. 

• The reason people -- especially children -- find this disturbing is because even babies know that the painted-on face is not an authentic expression of what the person under the make-up is actually feeling. The children & babies (and adults) are reacting to the fact that the face paint is telling an obvious lie. 

• Because the paint says one thing and the person's demeanor says another, you don't trust them. And since they seem to be trying very hard to tell you they're happy, that makes you even more suspicious. Why the heck do they want so much for you to believe that they're happy? What else are they going to do that I'm supposed to ignore and think that means happiness too?

• So instead of happy giggling children, you get suspicion, distrust, and fear. 

"We found that clowns [were] universally disliked by children," said one researcher who studied whether using clown images to decorate a children's hospital ward would be a good idea. 

Children actually don't like clowns -- something to consider the next time you're planning a child's birthday party.  
(Photo from Rap Genius)

• OK, this is making sense. I'm not going to feel your clown-fear with you, but now I understand where it's coming from. 

• But this raises other questions. Are people just as afraid of sad clowns? Do people think the sad clowns are also lying and are therefore suspicious? Or are they not afraid of fake sadness in the same way they're afraid of fake happiness? 

• (Personally, I loathe sad clown art. Detest it. I don't think you can even call it art.  I think you call it a cultural splinter in the eye. So I am not going to post any images of sad clowns.)

• Some people say they are less afraid of sad clowns than happy ones. But other people say the sad clowns disturb them even more than the happy ones. Still others are not afraid of the happy ones at all, but are only afraid of the sad ones. 

• Thus, apparently it's not just the fake-happy emotions that people distrust, it's any fake emotions. (researchers agree with this).  Perhaps which fake-ness you distrust more may depend on your personal make-up (pun), or perhaps on your own childhood experiences.

I wondered if people were afraid of rodeo clowns too. I thought maybe not, since they help the rodeo contestants. But this guy, Keith Isley, who is a rodeo clown -- they prefer now to be called bullfighters -- said one of the parts of his job is helping people get comfortable with his clown-ness. One of the ways he does that is to let them see him put on his make-up, and even let them put some of it on him themselves.
(Photo by Michael Cavazos at the Longview News-Journal)

• People who treat patients for clown phobias -- I'm talking the debilitating, affects-your-life level of fear -- say that it's similar to lots of other phobias: clown phobia originates at some point in childhood, when the child experienced something negative or traumatic involving a clown. The person never had cause or reason to let go of the fear, so it only intensified over time. 

• The best way to treat clown & any phobia is to bring the person into contact with the feared thing gradually, a little bit more over time. The person can cope with the anxiety at relatively low levels while they learn that the thing they're afraid of won't actually harm them. 

• Popular culture may actually not be helping that effort. 

• There have been lots of happy clowns that people used to like, or seemed to like.  There was Clarabell the Clown, who was Howdy Doody's silent sidekick. (The first guy who played Clarabell was Bob Keeshan, who later became Captain Kangaroo.)

L to R: Buffalo Bob, Howdy Doody, and Clarabell the Clown
(Photo from The Fifties Web)

• There was also Bozo the Clown, who was so popular by the mid-1960s that there was a 10-year wait to get tickets to see his show.

We had a Bozo the Clown show at our local TV station.  One of the meteorologists played him.  I got to be on his show with the rest of my Bluebird troop.  He had a game where a lucky kid from the audience had to throw a ball into one of several circles, with the best prizes in the farthest circle. My friend Jill got to be the lucky kid, and she won a huge container of Tootsie Rolls that lasted her 2 years.  I don't remember anyone ever saying they were afraid of Bozo.

(Photo from Infinity Dish TV Blog)

• But then came a whole raft of evil clowns.  The first one was the real thing.

• John Wayne Gacy, a real-life guy who dressed up as a clown for children's parties and was also a serial rapist and murderer. 

• Then came the movies:

• Poltergeist (1982) - a boy's clown doll comes to life and tries to drag him under the bed

• It (1986) - Stephen King's Pennywise the Clown is actually a demon who attacks children

• Clownhouse (1989) - escaped mental patients disguise themselves as clowns and murder-slaughter all sorts of people in a rural town

• Batman movies featuring the Joker. Jack Nicholson's Joker looked, to me, like Jack Nicholson with green paint on his face.  Heath Ledger's Joker, on the other hand, is a different story.  He is scary-looking, for sure. (But isn't that what you want in a villain?)

• Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) - OK, really?  Some people include that one their list of scary clown movies?  The thing was a spoof!

Their weapons are popcorn that turn into spider-like insects, and cotton candy that gets spun into a suffocating cocoon of sugar-death. There's also something about the whipped cream pies that I can't remember.
(Photo from Pop-Break)

• This site actually ranks Killer Klowns as the scariest clown movie ever.   It also lists 25 scary clown movies -- which you might be interested in, if you're into that kind of thing.

• But you see the point.  Movies have taken the clowns-can-be-unsettling thing and worked and worked it until they made clowns into fear-worthy icons.

• So I see it as no accident that, with the influx of evil clown movies beginning in the 1980s, that's when we started to see the coulrophobia word appear.  And the people who said they were afraid of my costume?  They were not people who grew up with Howdy Doody, but younger.  People who would have seen those evil-clown movies in the theaters when they came out.

• My final question is this: those of you who are afraid of clowns, are you afraid of KISS too?  Were you afraid of them in their heyday?  Eh, probably the people who are afraid of clowns didn't make it far enough into the entry even to see this question.

KISS: scary clowns or rock icons? They wore white face paint too, you know.
(Photo from Huff Post Entertainment)



Sources
NPR, Fear of Clowns: Yes, It's Real, August 6, 2013
Linda Rodriguez-McRobbie, The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary, Smithsonian Magazine, August 1, 2013
Krystal D'Costa, Why Are We Afraid of Clowns? Scientific American, October 31, 2011
Bill Briggs, No laughing matter: Fear of clowns is serious issue, NBC News, April 20, 2012
Joseph Durwin, Coulrophobia & the Trickster, Trinity University
Coulrophobia: the Fear of Clowns
World Wide Words, Coulrophobia
Charles Bryce, 2011 Stock Show & Rodeo: Clowning Serious Business, San Angelo Standard-Times,February 12, 2011

Apple #646: State Fairs

I went to our state fair this past week and, as always, had a marvelous time.  I love looking in on the many and various animals that people bring to show at the fair, and I always hope to catch some sort of competition where either adults or kids are showing the animals they raised, in hopes of winning a ribbon.  The food is always an adventure of one kind or another.  The rides are OK.  My favorite is, hands down, the Ferris wheel.

Every state's fair is a celebration of that state's agriculture and animal husbandry, so each fair is a little different.  Which means I won't be able to find many facts about state fairs in general.  But I can give you some highlights.



Ferris wheel at the Delaware State Fair. I bet you wouldn't have thought Delaware had a State Fair, would you?
(Photo by Lee Cannon on Flickr)

• Which state fair do you think is the oldest?  Bet you didn't guess Michigan's.  Their first state fair was held in 1849.

• For years, North Dakota had 4 state fairs in different locations.  By 1966, they decided it was time to have only 1, so they chose the location that was the most successful of the 4, and that was Minot.  It's been held in Minot ever since.

• Iowa's State Fair is among the largest, covering 445 acres, including 160 acres of wooded campgrounds.  Attendance for the last several years has topped 1 million. 

Food

• Minnesota's state fair boasts a butter sculpture of that year's Princess Kay of the Milky Way (a fancy name for Minnesota's dairy princess), plus an "All You Can Drink" milk stand.  About 20,000 gallons of milk are consumed through that one concession.

• State Fairs with butter cows: Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Utah 

The butter cow & calf at the Ohio State Fair, along with 2010's companion sculptures: Joe Thomas, offensive lineman for the Cleveland Browns; a giant football; and Chinedum Ndukwe, safety for the Cincinnati Bengals. Naturally.
(Photo from the Ohio Lottery)



One year, in addition to its butter cow, Iowa featured American Gothic in butter.  It seems fitting, somehow.
(Photo from the Iowa State Fair)

• At the Iowa State Fair, more than 50 types of food are sold on a stick. In addition to the likely suspects such as corn dogs, turkey drumsticks, cotton candy, and deep-fried Twinkies, here are some of the other stick-delivered items: 

• pickles
• bacon
• hot bologna
• hard-boiled eggs
• pineapple
• honey
• octopus-shaped hotdogs
• turkey sausage wrapped in a pancake
• unicorn lollipops.  These last are undescribed, as if what they are must be obvious.

• If that's not enough for you, the Minnesota State Fair has more than 70 types of food on a stick. 

Also at the Minnesota State Fair, Cocoa Cheese Bites: Nuggets of Wisconsin cheddar cheese breaded with Cocoa Puffs and fried, served with chocolate dipping sauce.
(Photo from the Minnesota State Fair, Aug 22-Sept 2, 2013)

• The Wisconsin State Fair sold 7,065 orders of Deep Fried Beer from its Budweiser Grill in 2011.

• Cream Puffs are apparently Wisconsin State Fair's big food item. In 2012, they sold over 375,000 of them.

• At the Kansas State Fair, you can get alligator on a stick.  At the California State Fair, you can get python.

Animals

• An estimated 170-200 animals are born during the course of Minnesota's State Fair, which lasts for 12 days. 

• The largest rabbit at the Iowa State Fair was a 2012 participant. It weighed 22 pounds, 5.5 ounces. 

• Kansas State Fair's largest pumpkin was in 2007, weighing 976.2 pounds. 

• More than 40,000 ribbons, rosettes, and other prizes are awarded at Iowa's State Fair each year.  

This turkey won 3rd place! He's probably from Perry County, but I like to think his name is Perry.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

You can also see superhero sheep.  In order to keep their sheared and washed wool clean prior to being shown, sheep handlers dress their sheep in these canvas outfits. To me, they look like superhero suits.
(Photo from the Minnesota State Fair, Aug 22-Sept 2, 2013)



A sheep getting sheared. Geez, right down to the pink.  But see? After you go to all that trouble, you don't want the 'do to get messed up.
(Photo by the Apple Lady) 




I wanted to take this bunny home.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)



Just as I took this picture, the thing went off.  I mean, this rooster crowed right in my face, so immediately and so loudly, I jumped.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)



This duck really didn't like my camera pointing at it.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)



This duck, however, is just chillin' under her water dish. She's a duck under water! Har har
(Photo by the Apple Lady)



It's never the ones you expect.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)


The animals are my favorite part. In case you can't tell. 

Changes in State Fair Culture

• Changes in consumer eating preferences have affected what animals are brought to state fairs.  In the 1960s, the popular conception was "the more fat, the more tender the beef."  So most of the cattle at the fairs were Herefords and Angus, and they were bred to be "low-slung and broad."

• Now, with more people looking for leaner beef, other more exotic breeds are represented, including Simmental, Brahman, Charolais, and Maine-Anjou cattle.

• In the dairy realm, fewer farmers bring Jersey cows because their milk has a high butterfat content, which is out of fashion today.  Now most of the dairy cows are Holsteins.

• The people who buy the animals have changed, too.  Now it's the commercial rabbit breeder and the purebred swine breeder who are looking over the farmers' animals, and they're more interested in breeding processes that require a greater degree of technical training and scientific knowledge.

• The entertainment is different now, too. In the 1900s, fairgoers enjoyed cracker- and pie-eating contests, nail-driving competitions, and chances to guess how many kernels of corn a hog can eat in a day.  Today's entertainment features tractor pulls, auto races, fine arts exhibits, and performances by popular musicians. 

Famous People & Activities

• Teddy Roosevelt gave his famous "speak softly and carry a big stick" speech at the Minnesota State Fair in 1901. 

• The Iowa State Fair's Grandstand performance that drew the largest crowd to a single show remains the Beach Boys, who drew 25,400 to one show in 1975. 

• At the Minnesota State Fair, the act that broke their all-time Grandstand ticket sales record was Christina Aguilera. 

• The Texas State Fair -- excuse me, the State Fair of Texas -- is held in the fall. This year it's Sept 27-Oct 20. The Texas-Oklahoma U football game has been played at the State Fair each year since 1929. 

• At the Illinois State Fair (Aug 8-18), you can milk a cow yourself, and then you can taste wines in the Twilight Ballroom while listening to live jazz, big band, or swing.

• This year, Ke$ha and Journey will be performing at the Illinois State Fair.  Not together.  Separate performances.

There are also many fine products available for purchase. Such as this highly elegant fox ring with genuine fuzzy tuft. Only $10!
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Don't forget the rides. This is the Skyflyer at the Minnesota State Fair.
(Photo from the Minnesota State Fair, Aug 22-Sept 2, 2013)



About the end of the day at the Ohio State Fair, but people are still fairgoing it up. That's a double Ferris wheel in the distance.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Sources
Cenex, State Fair Fun Facts
CBS News, By the Numbers: State Fair Facts & Tid Bits, August 23, 2012
Missouri State Fair History Summary
Iowa State Fair Trivia and Historical Highlights
Meet Minneapolis, 10 Secrets We Bet You Didn't Know About the State Fair, August 21, 2012
Minnesota State Fair Trivia
Wisconsin State Fair Fun Facts and Media Kit on a Stick
Kansas State Fair Fun Fair Facts
State Fair of Texas State Fair Facts
Illinois State Fair